The Sharia Debate in Canada 

Khalid Hasan

 “Justice is not a mere consumer product and citizens are more than retail consumers,” she says. She argues that if the proposed change is implemented, it will amount to privatising Ontario’s Family Law and placing it in the hands of private practitioners who have already started marketing their services as alternate justice providers whereas they are no more than “for-profit religious judges”

The debate that has been raging in the Muslim community in the Canadian province of Ontario for the last several months is important because what is at issue could spill across to other countries, from the most conservative to those that are still in the process of finding a workable balance between religion and modernity.

The lines are drawn, the divisions are clear and one can only watch with mounting interest the outcome. The issue involves family and personal law. A conservative section of Canadian Muslims, many of them Pakistanis, would like to have personal and family disputes, and questions arising out of such disputes, settled in accordance with what they call Shari’a law instead of laws applicable to other Canadians. Those opposing this attempt argue that since there is no one agreed definition of Shari’a, it will lead to bitter sectarian controversies, and divide the Muslim community at a time when it needs to join hands, move forward and dispel the label of reaction and extremism that has been plastered across its face. Muslim women are fearful that the new arrangement will work against them and be used by men — fathers, husbands, brothers — to deny them their rights as equal citizens.

The Ontario Attorney General Marion Boyd has thrown a spanner in the works by recommending that the practice not only be adopted and continued but that “Muslim principles” — which she has failed to define despite being asked to do so — be allowed as a substitute for the Ontario Family Law Act. When asked what provisions of the Act were in conflict with what she called “Muslim principles”, she failed to provide an answer. Arbitration by the Shari’a-based tribunals will be binding.

One progressive Muslim community leader who has taken up the cudgels on behalf of those opposing the conservative move is Rizwana Jafri, vice principal of a high school in the city of Toronto and president of the Muslim Canadian Congress. In an open letter to Premier Dalton McGuinity of Ontario, she points out that the bid to make use of religious laws to settle family disputes through binding arbitration as a substitute to the Ontario family law court system has deeply divided the Muslim community and caused serious concern among women’s groups and children’s advocates. She says the Muslim Canadian Congress is opposed to all religious courts and tribunals that trespass the public domain. She argues that whether they are Rabbinical or Christian courts, Shari’a-based arbitration tribunals or any other religious-based quasi-judicial body cannot, and should not, be allowed to substitute the existing court and judicial system which is based on laws created by parliament whose members are accountable to those who elected them.

Ms Jafri, who is married and the mother of two children, writes that under the cover of “Muslim principles” what is being attempted is “Shari’a by stealth.” She argues that Attorney General Boyd by maintaining that opting for arbitration under Shari’a will be voluntary, is reducing justice to a “mere consumer commodity”, something that is antithetical to both Islamic and Canadian values. “Justice is not a mere consumer product and citizens are more than retail consumers”, she adds. She also argues that if the proposed change is implemented, it will amount to privatising Ontario’s Family Law and placing it in the hands of private practitioners who have already started marketing their services as alternate justice providers whereas they are no more than “for-profit religious judges”.

Ms Jafri quotes Prof Omid Safi, who teaches Islamic Studies at Colgate University, New York, who wrote, “The use of religious law as a substitute for laws created by parliament, and the establishment of a multi-tier legal system — one for average Canadians and one for Muslim Canadians, and others for Catholic or Jewish Canadians — is not only unjust, but also detrimental to the well being of all Canadian citizens.” He said that he was “alarmed at the prospects of repressive Muslim governments around the world pointing to Canada, and the implementation of ‘Shari’a’ within Canada, as a justification for their oppressive legal systems. This is not a comment on Islamic jurisprudence as a whole, but rather on the repressive interpretations of Shari’a found in those countries. It is unrealistic to think that the ayatollahs of Iran, the proponents of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and other countries will not use this to promote the viability of their oppressive visions.”

The last word should be Ms Jafri’s who wrote, “Our position is not against religion. On the contrary, we stand for the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. However, freedom of religion does not mean that we dilute laws and strengthen the power of rabbis, imams and priests over their communities, especially the most vulnerable.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is [email protected]